On the Contrary
by altairattorney
Summary: [PW:AA to T&T] With him, nothing goes quite as expected.


**On the Contrary**

When he shows up in court on the other bench, the world does not collapse. Not yet.

Your confidence is nice while it lasts. Still, the chance to dispose of him as a matter of routine vanishes too soon. With it goes the rest, leaving you alone to face something you thought long dead.

You have tried to escape all your life. Here and now, you cannot do the same. His eyes are right there, rough and impatient and burning with questions.

Today, he came back to crush you.

You had sworn to never be bothered by your memories again. After all, this is what fate chose for you — you have no room left for complaints, when you are lucky enough to be alive and free. The abandon to regrets belong just where he does.

You can leave him in your past. You have changed.

But he hasn't.

* * *

Twice is too much to be a coincidence.

Despite all the bad names you may be called, you are not stupid. The signs are too clear for you to turn back. Bad omens pile up in every corner of your life — you turn over in your bed, toss the covers aside, a soul without peace in a town that does not care.

You are falling apart. Damn it all, it has happened again.

It is his fault, you mutter under your breath. It is because of him and whatever he might want from you. It is the way his stare plants itself in your mind, the way his words leave you with no escape route. He is not surrendering until you do.

Now that you know, you curse him even more, because this is it. You are past the end — it is only going downhill from there. It is over, over, over.

You stare at the dark, and the image of his face stares back. Even like this, it is too real to be a dream. This cannot be happening.

But it is.

* * *

You sent yourself to the gallows, at least. There will be no need to unearth what you have done. In the indefinite haze that is the morning after, you let yourself adapt to the idea of being finished like that.

You will rid yourself and the world of this burden, without needing to explain.

It is just a matter of time, you repeat to your tense soul. There will be no loose ends left — there was never anything important you would have to leave behind.

He chooses that moment to come along.

It terrifies you, how he refuses to listen. He fights whatever you say full force, against all odds, against years over years of tales and beliefs wrought all around you.

But it can't be, you insist, through twitching fingers and a heart that burns. He will finally get tired and walk away, like the long line of attorneys who outright refused to even see you.

Whatever his motives, if he has a sliver of sanity left, he will abandon you.

But he doesn't.

* * *

You carve the message on paper as if your pen were a knife. It will be enough, you hope, to make the world keep its distance as you figure out how to be reborn.

It has to happen, after this whole mess. You need this small universe of cruelty to give up on you, until the system you have always belonged to eventually moves on. To quit, maybe start over — you wish for nothing else.

At least for now, you do not plan on turning back.

No, you will not be missed. Who couldn't do better without you around? It does not have to be a death, for the people that matter. They will get it, and probably be informed. Sometime.

But your mind has been running much, to make up for fifteen years, and your thoughts slide down the slope that inevitably leads to him.

You shake your head, stubborn as ever. Even he will have to forget.

He refuses to.

* * *

You had no choice but your best bet. It backfired spectacularly.

You played safe. A firm tone means decision, a slight grin confidence. It is a ritual you have tested together, all the way through the fire of battle, and it never disappointed.

The outcome varied, of course — the weight of loss and victory was heartfelt, redrawn and rewritten by the pair of your voices. It always changed. You shouldn't have felt the slightest pang of surprise when he replied in the last way you had expected.

That hurt, without a doubt. It hurt you, with a nasty pang you had to hold back, to see him reject your presence in such difficult circumstances. Compared to now, it still was nothing.

Seeing him smile like this gives you the measure of how wrong you were. You are not even sure you understand now, in the warmth and the light of a dinner between friendly faces. You never thought you would meet him heartbroken, fight him in despair, leave him in gratitude.

You never realized he cared this much. You wince under the weight of it.

This cannot be, you tell yourself in a shiver, as he thanks you with a happiness he seemed to have lost. Only later, on the way to your car, you process the thought that freezes you in shock.

You were incredibly unfair to him. There was no reason for him to forgive you.

Yet, no matter what, he is always going to.

* * *

The world already stopped making sense several hours ago, on a jet in solitary flight.

Mid-journey, in vain, you asked yourself what you were even doing. You found no answer. It was the first and last time before you refused — you had to keep at bay the weight of the consequences, between money, time, repercussions at work.

To be honest, you could not focus on those. He was in danger, you had to go. Simple as that.

The surroundings make even less sense now, in the half-light of the hospital. Two tired nurses on a prolonged night shift keep by your side, chattering out information and footsteps. Lack of sleep gnaws at you, making the walk even harder. They point you to the number of a room — it sounds so far from this corridor, from this staircase.

Not that it matters. Either way, you made it here just to get there.

When you do, you feel you could not be anywhere else. You will have cursed half of the universe by tomorrow — Larry and his carelessness, the murder, the lies.

For now, all that stops being important.

It is hard to resist your rationality. You wonder again what you, of all the people on the face of Earth, are doing in front of his fever-stricken body. You pass light fingers on his forehead, shaken at how it burns, and know the answer.

No one else in the world can help him, if not you. There is no one he trusts as much. You let your heart swell, in secret, even as you grumble you would never have moved from your bed for a simple flu.

He laughs weakly, but its sincerity still puts you to shame. He says you would, because you care.

And you really do.

* * *

You are not happy when he requests to see you off.

After such a pleasant celebration, made sweeter by relief, the paperwork marked a rough change in your mood. Literal piles of sheets to fill in, of explanations to give and fares to pay. Right now, you don't feel you would bid him the most polite of goodbyes.

Then, all it takes is a change of perspective, and you turn around the corridor to see him already there. He is leaning against the wall, wrapped in a cheap coat and a possibly cheaper scarf, counting the minutes on the airport clock.

You do not know why your gaze softens, but you let it be.

It is the usual scene in a new setting — you dance your careful dance of words, speaking volumes beneath silence and pauses. You never know what to say, even though you never say much either.

There is no need, of course. There never was. Still, you wish you would find a way to tell him about your gratitude.

Only to remember, with an invisible hand clenched on your chest, that this time it is the other way around.

How have you forgotten so fast?

Lost in thought, you miss his start, as well as the quick movement he makes to trap you in a hug. It is clumsy enough to make you both die of embarrassment — but some part of you, responsive and unknown, informs you that you couldn't care less.

Carefully, step by step, you hold him back. It is surprisingly all right with you.

You are almost stuttering something when he pulls away, blushing furiously. He apologizes with a flurry of nonsense — he explains it was an old purpose, which he just had to fulfill. Any further struggle to build a conversation dies down.

His laugh his crystalline, now that he is in almost good health. On the way to the gate, he says that you are both getting better at this.

You pass through, turn around, and smile.

Maybe you are.


End file.
